AA Merger: After Paint Job and Fashion News, Now Comes the Union Deal

American Airlines recently changed its airplane livery and announced a fashion makeover of its uniforms. Today, the Transportation Workers Union negotiated wage increases for AA if the merger with USAirways becomes a reality.

Another day, another plot twist in the AA–USAirways possible merger saga. After a livery change that kept airline buffs busy on Twitter for days and a second announcement that celebrity fashion duo KaufmanFranco (who've dressed Kim Kardashian, among others) would be creating new uniforms for the AA cabin crew, we now see in today's news that AA's workers are inking a deal to ensure pay raises if and when the merger goes through.

Do they know something that everyone has been suspecting for ages? That all of this is a sign that American first wants to emerge from bankruptcy as a stand-alone company before it gets too serious about pairing up with its Phoenix based competitor? This would give AA’s top management the upper hand, the reasoning goes. Of course, American’s unions would prefer it the other way around: make the merger deal part of the overall package that gets it out of Chapter 11. Hence the scrambling to pass a payment plan.

In that latter scenario, the betting is that USAirways’ CEO Doug Parker would lead the company, rather than current AA CEO Tom Horton. (Actually Horton did disclose the day of the livery unveiling that he had called Parker the night before “as a courtesy.”)

In the meantime, these makeover moves aren’t cheap for an economically impaired airline. While AA isn’t disclosing the cost of the facelift, aviation sources say it costs about $40,000 to $60,000 to paint a narrow-body like a 737, and up to $130,000 for a 747. Luckily for AA, the job won't entail repainting all of its planes, because an order of 500 new ones will transform its fleet from one of the oldest in the industry to one of the youngest, and many of those planes sporting the circa 1960 look will be mothballed. Then again, if the two lines merge, we're talking about 1,500 aircraft that will need a new look. That's a lot of paint.

American Airlines Hires Fashion Duo KaufmanFranco to design new uniforms for flight crew, service agents, and pilots: